Emotional states are not simply biases to eliminate. They are epistemic environments: each one discloses different dimensions of reality. Wisdom comes from comparing those disclosures, rather than identifying with any single one of them.

Maybe it is Australia, or maybe it is Asian Studies, but ASAA has an unbelievably social culture of talking about ideas. I found this very refreshing. In some academic environments, conversations become pragmatic very quickly: grants, positions, outputs, strategy, survival. All understandable.

Top rule in creative knowledge production: every piece of feedback is a gift. Not because it is “the truth.” There are different concepts of truth in philosophy, to begin with, ahah. But because internalizing this assumption makes the whole system stronger: less ego, faster revision, better work.

I was deeply impacted by Graeber (and Burnout Society). These ideas mattered to knowledge workers before #AI. Maybe this is why I look for aliveness everywhere. And one of the deepest pleasures in life is meeting someone who can play with Buddhist jokes at an abstract level. I really can’t stop.

Ytd, I spent a lot of time with my mentor discussing my research program. He kept emphasizing that the second book may matter more than the dissertation monograph. This is precisely the level of advice one needs when not exactly in the mood to polish another R&R paper one is reluctant to submit.

One unexpected gift of finishing a PhD is realizing that your projects were never separate. They were simply different doors into the same room. Mine seems to be this: How do environments shape human becoming? Everything else has become fieldwork.

“The first rule of magic is containment.” I heard this while listening to Natalie Goldberg today. I keep her best lines in Notes for rainy evenings, when motivation is low and the outside feels like too much. Some writers change the weather inside the room.

#ASAA2026 Post-conflict reconstruction and Buddhism Roundtable. Someone discussed temples inside shopping malls in Sri Lanka. I said that, living in Hong Kong, I often feel we have the opposite problem: too many malls, not enough temples, churches, and shrines.

Research is material. Writing is craft. Life is field site. Attention is where the whole stupid thing happens.

Academia is also a place where ego learns to wear impersonal language.

I had a fun activity today at ASAA: a mock interview for a teaching position. I had to describe my educational philosophy. My last teaching experience was almost 10 years ago, and now I am not even sure I am a researcher in the normal sense. More like a writer and creative systems architect, ahah.

Efficiency is not enough. A good system should make you less stupid, less scattered, and more alive—not just faster. #ResearchSystems

While preparing two talks and meetings for next week, I keep coming back to the same thing. Whether it is HK schools, religion and freedom, or trying to write while moving through European festivals, Burger Kings, FlixBuses, and hotels, the core problem is still the same.

#AI is a perfect Buddhist object lesson: illusion, projection, emptiness. AI is a machine that produces form without a stable essence. Almost “form is emptiness” with a user interface.

A PhD supervisor is not exactly a parent, not exactly a boss, not exactly a mentor, and not exactly an ex. But the successful version may have something in common with a good ending: mutual transformation, clean boundaries, and a productive relationship after the formal romance is over.

Again, I have a stupid problem, which is actually good to have. Still a problem. AAA and AAR—anthropology and religion, two major American conferences—happen on the same dates again this year, and my abstracts were accepted by both. Again. The difficult part is that both works need their audiences.

I downloaded 2 more Natalie Goldberg audiobooks and packed a new MSR tent to replace my old Hubba Hubba—the one that survived the Caribbean and the route across Africa from Kenya to Namibia. Preparing seriously, apparently. It will be my 5th or 6th time in Australia, maybe more, but all long ago.

Submission is not the end of thinking. It is the moment thinking stops being private mythology and enters reality. This is why I increasingly trust submitted imperfection more than polished intention.

By the way: A paper in review has a future; a paper in endless preparation has a mythology. This sentence rather accurately compresses my whole post-PhD lesson. #AcademicWriting

One problem with academic work: eventually, you may start hating reading from screens because screens become associated with nasty and grim business. I partly solved this with Audible and Russian audiobooks. I listen to both fiction and nonfiction, often at 2.5x.

After 2–3 weeks of intense daily writing, I am almost guaranteed to start hating the material. Then the desire flips: I want to read. Read read read. Knowledge production changes knowledge consumption.

When #AI first became publicly usable, I experimented with it obsessively. I was writing my dissertation then, on Hong Kong, religion, and education—a topic with maybe 10 ideal readers in the world, ahah. Suddenly there was a machine that could talk with me about it every day.

I’ve been experimenting with the public self on LinkedIn lately. LiveJournal energy with academic stakes. Not confession. Not branding. A projection surface: you show a life; people complete it. Life is harder when you learn more. Craft gets better with feedback loops and external accountability.

Academia is not only “job → department → tenure → publications.” It is also an ecosystem of conferences, papers, reputational signals, mentors, affiliations, CV architecture, topics, timing, visibility, and social trust. Once you see that, the game becomes more legible.

Co-authored with #AI: my first proper generated meme image. It still looks very AI—somewhere between Facebook chaos, Thailand expat meme pages, and a low-budget productivity nightmare—but I’m honestly fascinated. In 3–4 iterations and maybe 100 words total, it understood the structure I wanted.

One more similarity between raves and conferences that larger ones of both tend to have official apps. #RaveAsMethod #ASAA2026

Small infrastructure of aliveness, brought by Marriott: a high floor, sunrise light, early traffic below, and enough distance from yesterday to start thinking again. Start again; start again. #TravelAsNonMethod #Bangkok

One mechanism of reels culture: we get hooked by small insights of familiarity. A good reel says something about us that we vaguely suspected but had not articulated yet. “Oh, yes, that is me.” “Oh, yes, I do this.” “Oh, yes, this explains me.” The hook is not only entertainment. It is recognition.

One more writing rule: use two deadlines. One deadline is not enough. It becomes a panic-and-ego management issue. The first deadline is for internal shipping: save the file, submit it to yourself. It is real. The second deadline comes 1–3 days later. That is when you clean up what actually exists.

Another basic rule I use: one is okay; two is gone. You miss one day because you are sick, tired, lazy, "lazy", sad, traveling, or simply human. One missed day is not the problem. Two is dangerous. Two has an unbelievable magnetism to become three. And three is already a rule.

A small writing rule I use: put the seed. It is very hard to start from nothing. But it is manageable to find the most emotionally pleasant, interesting, or at least doable part of the task and make one tiny step. Write one bad sentence. Done? You now have a seed. Please do not fuck up this seed.

By “infrastructures of aliveness,” I mean the forms that keep a person awake enough to live sustainably. Not only big things; also small ones: cities, writing routines, raves, hotels, Buddhist practice, travel, friendships, sunrises, deadlines, walks. The question is what makes life feel less dead?

Presenting #HabitusOfStaycations next week, so maybe it is time to tell its long story. During Covid, I was stuck in Hong Kong. When it started, I was actually moving through New Zealand, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Australia, etc. Then Hong Kong tightened around its very cautious health ethos.

Maybe I need a new disclaimer. This feed is a small, coherent, emotionally intelligent broadcast of one mildly adventurous life—mine. I’m still mostly down to freedom, Asia, clarity, beauty, and trying not to live stupidly.

I spent the whole day polishing slides and preparing for ASAA, also sorting out the whole summer’s logistics. About 10 Marriott hotels booked in Melbourne, NL, Prague, Budapest, Milan, HK... Tickets. The Prague–Budapest overnight train does not exist anymore, so I bought FlixBus, ahah. #PostPhD

Modern life overloads the person, so we build forms: systems, rituals, cities, raves, AI, writing practices, Buddhist disciplines, travel routes, and public personas to remain alive.

Beautiful forks. One unpleasant habit I picked up from education, Asia, the PhD, etc., and my amateur experiments in EQ: I sometimes put people in front of a choice. Answer honestly, or save face. The problem is that “honestly” is not neutral. It is often my own sophisticated cultural-moral frame.

Downshifting. I’m personally very inspired by Buddhist ethics: less, simpler, lighter. The problem is that a human being can either develop upward or degrade downward. Less is not automatically wisdom. Sometimes it is clarity; sometimes it is just collapse with a nice story.

Be afraid of your dreams: they can suddenly become reality. When I came to Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to raise my writing output. Production of texts is my hard non-negotiable. I also hoped to reward myself with a hike — snake season, after all. #TravelAsNonMethod

Apparently, when I treat people like I want to be treated, they get long messages, unsolicited conceptual frameworks, and 3–5 follow-up questions. There seems to be something wrong with Kantian ethics ahah.

Three rules of authorship. Or method. Whatever: 1. I start from a wound or question, then build a structure that forces me to learn reality. 2. My questions are personal; I make them pass through the world. 3. The work begins as private necessity, becomes public inquiry, and seeks a durable form.

Independent research needs architecture, or it dissolves into noise. Unfortunately, architecture also needs maintenance, which is how one becomes the unpaid facilities manager of one’s own freedom. #ResearchSystems #AcademicWriting

Authorship compounds. At first, you think you are just posting notes. Then you realize you are building an archive of sentences, concepts, fieldnotes, and future papers. The feed becomes a writing system.

#Top3 today, Hong Kong rainy summer Sunday edition: 1. #DigitalDetox pre-submission paper polishing 2. 90-minute admin and logistics block around next two months in Australia and Europe 3. evening/night walk to the Peak and HKU

Call this overgeneralization, but the greatest danger in humanity is not malice. The greatest danger is unconsciousness. Most other problems are essentially derivatives. Wars, AI, politics, whatever—people stop seeing what they are actually doing.

The romance of overwork. Some societies (and people) romanticize work to death. Academia often does the same. The language is usually beautiful: duty, values, excellence, vocation, impact. The hidden layer is less beautiful: emotional dependency and exploitation.

Hong Kong school wall, 2026. #AI assists learning. Creative hearts build tomorrow. Some slogans are already research questions.

With #RaveAsMethod, I see my mission as connecting two worlds: the research room and the rave. The former gives language, method, and critique. Festivals offer intensity, rhythm, a sense of temporary community, and strange honesty.

#Buddhism is a religion for people suspicious of easy comfort.

About 10 years ago, I was very sick and spent a week or two in an ICU. The first year after that, including relearning how to ride a motorcycle, was heavy. Around that time, an old friend I knew from Japan told me something that helped: live as if you are already dead. Everything else is a bonus.